When I was a kid, a buddy of mine came over on New Year’s to play our favorite pastime, table hockey. The first thing he did was hit the smallest room in the house to drop a trainload of buffalos. I hit the kitchen to wait for him. My dad, three sisters, and brother were in the family room on the floor watching the tube.
“Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? Not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away – behind the moon – beyond the rain…”
My braces tore into a cold piece of steak between slices of rye with the feel of a run-over baseball glove. I moved in for a closer look at Kansas. With too big a bite, I began to choke, and choke, and then seriously choke.
My father hesitated, probably convinced I was performing another one of my mock theater auditions. But our eyes met, and he saw my whole life flash before me. He rushed over, picked me up by both feet in one hand, and smacked my back with the other. I was a small kid, and he was a strong man. I continued to suffocate, however, and the pressure of the blood in my head was building.
“He’s choking,” my younger sister said in a conspiratorial voice.
One must have gratitude to have a factual news reporter on the scene. In my upside-down peripheral, I could see wide eyes with mouths agape, the sight of which frightened me just as much as not being able to breathe.
My father geared up for another attack. “Get ready,” he said. And how exactly, I wondered as I dangled, a fish out of water, was I supposed to prepare?
Inhaling, Pops lifted me higher, and with one big exhale, struck my spine with a karate blow from Hell. The chunk of steak flew across the room. Through water-choked eyes, I followed the flight plan of the coughed-out package. The meat arced and plop onto an unlikely landing strip; my brother’s astonished mouth.
Bro immediately began to gag and search with one hand while holding his stomach with the other. I wanted to tell him the steak was on his tongue, not in his stomach. He stood and leaned over, afraid to touch it any further, in any way, as even spitting would have required. The mass slowly and painfully slid from his pasty white tongue, along with strands of phlegm and exaggerated grunts. My younger sister looked up just as it deposited itself in her hair.
“Oh gross, Oh God,” she yelled.
The weight and slime of the newly delivered parasite swung as she frantically whipped her hair. In a surge of creative panic, she secured a pencil and stabbed at the offensive protein while groaning, “Ah! Get it out! Get it out!”
The flurried strands of keratin met a Christmas candle flickering on the low-lying coffee table. Hair whooshed into a blaze of orange followed by black and a scorch of stink.
My father dropped me to the floor. I did a parachute landing roll.
Pop’s rushed to my oldest sister kneeling on the carpet in her bathrobe, having just finished a shower with a wet towel on her head. He stole the damp cotton and messily wrapped it around the Moses burning bush. And to think, only a moment before that darkened shrub had been a blonde.
My older sister overcompensated for the sudden removal of the turban and fell backward. Her glass of cola sailed beyond the safety of the family room and shattered on the kitchen floor. A new aroma joined the stink.
The children of the clan stared an accusatory stare; you’re in big trouble now. It wasn’t just cola in her drink, but Christmas cheer as well. The reek of Vodka married the stink of burning protein and joined with the ever-present holiday scent of nutmeg and fruitcake.
Busted and fearing the wrath of good Christians everywhere, she stomped away across the sloshed, inebriated floor. A slip, a fall, and to the tile she slammed, onto a piece of shattered glass. Blood gushed from her arm.
“Oh, my God, Daddy, Daddy!” she wailed and returned for a debus of the laceration accompanied by an odd smile of shock. But she had won. She had trumped the burn victim.
The crowd responded with, “Oh my Gods” and “Holy Mackerels,” repeated at different cadences for effect.
Dad tore the towel from the smoldering and blubbering miss junior mint, and like an experienced deli meat clerk, wrapped the newest fatality to stop the flow of Christmas red dripping all over the carpet.
Boom. The doggie door popped open, and the family dog thrust in to check out the excitement. In his beloved innocence, he thought it was playtime. He spotted the towel and tugged, his head jolting from side to side. My older sister screamed. Everyone screamed.
My middle sister pulled the nice doggy’s tail, and the dysfunctional mutt nipped her hand and went right back to the towel. Crying harmonized with screaming.
My brother tried to steady my older sisters jerking arm. Miss junior mint was beat-red sobbing, her hands pulling at the remains of the forest fire. Pops beat the dog with a fly swatter. Clan members threw items.
As I watched in a moron state of observation, I unconsciously worked my tongue to extract rye stuck in my metal braces. You could say I was a little behind the moon. Absently, I stepped on the TV remote, and a televangelist appeared, the volume way too high, as he loudly reprimanded the sinners of the world between dog growls, caterwauling, and my father’s family-friendly curses.
“Excuse me!” my buddy interrupted. He stood in the kitchen, his pants held up by one hand, his fly unzipped, and his belt unbuckled. His other hand pointed behind him.
Everyone stopped to look at the intruder—a sudden moment of breathless silence. The dog halted his prehistoric threat and side-glanced my buddy; canines still imbedded towel-deep. The Evangelicals telepathically sensed the moment and hushed to prayer.
I witnessed the look of disgust and surprise in my family’s eyes. Nothing less than a pervert had assaulted an intimate family moment. Innocent as the dog, my buddy’s focus toggled back and forth among the chaos. He gestured and explained, “I, uh, you’re out of wipe.”
A congregant in the Evangelical world capsized to the floor, huffing and puffing, swaying, and wailing, “Save me Jesus, Save me.”
All eyes in the room turned to the Lord.
I jumped up to join my buddy. Too quick. Vertigo hit me, and I toppled and tripped over my father’s foot. I reached for the coffee table for support, missed, and slammed my hand on the end of a butter knife coated with cheese dip sticking out over the end of the table. It left orbit at Mach speed.
The metal cheese missile rocketed into the middle of the TV. The screen cracked, fizzled, and popped, and went blank.
The front door of the house slammed open and rattled. A chill whipped in from the winter outside. Feet stomped down the hallway into the kitchen. My mother appeared and stood next to my frightened frozen snowman buddy, her rubber boots over her high heels dripping with snow. In her arms were two bags of groceries, one with toilet paper breathing out of the top. She stared at the freak show ogling back at her.
My middle sister seized the moment, used the fallen knife to scavenge the piece of steak, teased the dog with it, and threw the clump of cow out the doggie door. She followed the dog with a revenge kick as he ran outside.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what was all that banging about and who in God’s name stunk up the bathroom? Can’t anybody light some matches around here?” she demanded as she pushed my buddy’s head away with the toilet paper as though he was a coat rack. She curiously strode forward.
“What in the world happened to my new carpet?” she asked as she surveyed the wreckage. “Holy Mother of God! What in God’s name happened to my brand new TV!?” she screamed.
My brother waited, then pointed to me. My other siblings joined in, all fingers on me. My life-saving father glared at me and threw me under Dorothy’s house, “Why don’t you learn how to chew? How many times have I told you, you don’t chew enough?”
At that moment, I understood what Dorothy meant by far, far away, and well beyond the rain.
Before I could blurt out a defensive, my mom signaled to my buddy and me, “You two Neanderthals had best take a hike or heaven help me!”
We left the house without playing table hockey. My buddy left without wiping, something I always felt guilty about, not having more courage to demand.
—
Today, in my household, I make sure to never run out of toilet paper. I do not watch television. I have never had a dog named Toto. When Evangelicals come to my door, I suddenly develop Tourette’s syndrome. I have never again eaten steak. I do, however, still have a fondness for rye.
If some New Year’s Eve you stumble upon a man sitting alone in the middle of train tracks, eating rye, and croaking out a song intermixing Save Me Jesus with Somewhere Over the Rainbow, while laughing and slamming back a bottle of Vodka as he watches an approaching train; then please, by all means, join me.
I promise you I’ve been to therapy. I’ve done my homework. We will both roll out of the way a second before impact. Only then will you truly know what – far, far away, behind the moon, beyond the train – really means.
Trust me; I will have plenty of wipe for you.